Page 185 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The saint as envoy: bishops’ Lives

brought against him and temper his replies with mature counsel’. 185 Simi-
larly, the first reported event of his episcopate is his embassy to Rome
on behalf of Ricimer. Ennodius emphasises the primacy of this event
in Epiphanius’ episcopal career by exaggeration; after the careful record
of Epiphanius’ age during his early years, Ennodius compresses the five
years between Epiphanius’ election and the embassy to Anthemius with
the term mox, although he had exact information on the timing of the
journey. 186 Epiphanius’ episcopate is thus made to begin as it would con-
tinue and end, engaged in secular embassies protecting the interests of
the province of Liguria. Each of the bishop’s interlocutors asserts Epipha-
nius’ irresistible oratory and personality. Gundobad is made to address
Epiphanius with the three epithets cited above, describing Epiphanius
as a peace-maker; Epiphanius’ metropolitan, Laurence of Milan, defers
to his junior colleague’s experience, for ‘the laborious path of frequent
legations had wearied his footsteps, and more than once, through the
constantly coursing path of such journeys, the dust of the camp had
made him grimy’. 187 In his final oration before Theoderic, Epiphanius
characterises their relationship as suppliant and ruler: ‘Practice fashions
me to request necessities, you to grant them.’ 188 Like Sidonius’ portrait of
Avitus, Epiphanius is an envoy who eclipses his principal; Euric, replying
to the bishop’s speech on behalf of Nepos, accedes to his request, stating:
‘Venerable father, I will do as you demand, for the person of the legate
is greater to me than the power of the sender.’ 189 By both presentation
and definition, Epiphanius appears primarily as a legate.
The proximity of Ennodius’ image of Epiphanius to a secular ethos is
underscored by a chance coincidence. When in the Vita Epiphanius ap-
proaches Gundobad for the release of Italian captives, the king, persuaded
by the bishop’s eloquence and saintly bearing, agrees to free without ran-
som all the captives he possesses, and to encourage those of his men who
hold captives to release theirs also, but on payment of ransom, as the

185
Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 21–5, quotation at 22: qui et fortiter inlatas intentiones exciperet et maturitate
consilii inferendas temperaret.
186
Mox: Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 51. Timing: 72 (Epiphanius left Rome to return to Pavia on 9
March. The year mustbe 471, not 472, as Rome was besieged by Ricimer from February 472;
Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana xv, 4 with Fasti Vind. prior, s.a. 472; Seeck, Regesten, s.a. 471).
187
Gundobad: above, n. 172; Gundobad also calls the bishop Christianae lucis iubar, one ‘Christian’
epithet alongside three testimonials of Epiphanius as a peace-maker. Laurence: Ennodius, Vita
Epiphani, 124: cuius vestigia frequentium legationum laboriosus callis adtriverat et per tramitem huiuscemodi
itineris cursitantem non semel hispidum castrensis pulvis effecerat.B.N¨ af, ‘Die Zeitbewusstsein des
Ennodius und der Untergang Roms’, Historia 39 (1990), 120.
188
Before Theoderic: Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 185: et me ad postulanda necessaria et vos ad tribuenda
usus informat.
189
Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 91: Facio ergo,venerande papa,quae poscis,quia grandior est apud me legati
persona quam potentia destinantis.
159